Hello again everyone! Well, here is the beginning of yet another series of oneshots. Another listfic like Wedding Vows. These oneshots will be derived from the Bible, Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, verses 2-8. The title is derived from Ecc. 3:1- "To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under Heaven."(NKJV). There are 14 refrains. Expect the same cast of characters to show up- skipping around Booth history as usual.
Disclaimer: As always, Bones isn't mine, but my bones are. Enjoy!
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A time to be born and a time to die.
As a rational, empirical, forensic anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan accepted the inevitability of death in every living creature. Her mind knew that everything that has a beginning must also meet an ending. Her heart, on the other hand, did not accept it as well- especially when birth and death were separated by only one month. Such was the case with the remains of the infant that lay on the table before her.
She glanced at the rendering that Angela had completed earlier- the chubby-cheeked boy smiled in stark contrast with the bones laid out in front of her. The sterility of the lab and the gleam of the stainless steel table sent a shiver through her that she could neither identify nor categorize. Perhaps Booth would know; her partner was better at such things than she.
It was Booth, of course, who had brought the case to the Jeffersonian. The badly decomposed remains had been discovered in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial by a group of early-morning tourists who had come to view the sunrise. The tourists had called the police, who had called Cullen, who had, in turn, called Booth- who had awakened her with his call at six o'clock this morning. Dead babies were not good for tourism and it was incumbent on she and Booth and the rest of the 'Squint Squad' to determine the cause of death, and to bring the one responsible for it to justice as soon as possible.
Brennan paused and took a closer look at the development of the bones in front of her. Many were still in the process of turning to bone. The sutures on the skull had only recently been sealed, though they still resembled fissures in the creamy white bones.
She turned the skull and glanced inside. It was bathed in red. The bleach had not been allowed to penetrate inside, and had left the brain case intact.
Shaken baby. It was a classic symptom. Unfortunately, there was no other skeletal trauma which could help to confirm one way or another.
"Got anything for me yet, Bones?" Booth swiped his pass and then joined her on the platform.
She relayed the information that she had discovered already.
"How old was he?" he asked softly.
"I would estimate about a month old."
He swore, "What makes any parent shake their kid, huh, Bones? Rebecca and I had to watch some video about the dangers of it before we could even hold Parker!"
"I'm sorry, Booth," she laid her hand on his arm, her clinical tone softened.
She glanced back down at the bones, "The growth pattern seems a little odd."
"What do you mean?"
"I would expect to see more growth from a healthy infant. These bone seem abnormally small- even for a child as young as this."
"So what are you saying?"
"I need to look at the bones under magnification, but I think the child was malnourished."
He swore again, "I'll be up in your office talking to Cullen."
She nodded and started preparing a cross-section of the bone for microscopic analysis.
Thirty minutes later she was ready for a second opinion, "Zack, come here," he was at her side in moments, "What do you see?"
He squinted at the computer, "Disorganized patterning of the trabecular bone. Malnourishment?"
"It would appear so. Yes," she turned and looked at the bones in front of her. "And I would expect to see more growth, even in an infant this young…" her voice trailed off as she put the information together in her head.
"Booth will want to hear this."
She went up to her office. Booth apparently had finished his conversation with Cullen as he was fast asleep on her couch. He had been woken up even earlier than she had. She gently nudged him and he awoke with a grunt.
"I think the child was malnourished," she said when he was cognizant again.
"And shaken?"
"Yes."
"So how does that help me, Bones?"
"Malnourshiment, shaken baby… I don't like speculating but that indicates one or both of the parents."
"Great," he rolled his eyes, "That doesn't really narrow things down for me much. Do you know how many angry, negligent parents there are in DC, Bones?"
She scowled, "Of course not, Booth. That's your territory. With a child this small, there's really no way for me to narrow down the ID any further."
"But you didn't even give me race, age, or sex."
Cam walked in before she could reply, "I ran a tox screen on the remaining soft tissue," she held up a file which Brennan took, "It's positive for cocaine."
"She was on drugs too?" Booth asked.
"Cocaine is extremely addictive," Brennan said, skimming through the file, "It would explain why she didn't have the forethought to feed her infant."
"And why she shook her kid too," Booth followed the train of thought.
His phone rang. He answered it, acknowledging the voice on the other end. Brennan went back to the bones to see if there was anything she may have missed. There wasn't, and by the time she concluded that Booth was off of the phone.
"Well, Bones," he grinned for the first time that day, "I think we just caught our lucky break! DC police just brought in a cocaine junkie they found near the Memorial. Get this, her prints were all over the pacifier our guys found down at the scene and she keeps raving on about how she lost her baby."
"Get a DNA sample and I'll get it going right away," Cam ordered.
"Well, Booth," Brennan said as he trailed her up to her office, "Perhaps you won't have to look hard for your needle in the hayloft after all."
"Haystack, Bones," he smiled, "But good try."
They reached her office and she sank down into the couch and closed her eyes. It had been a long day and she was weary from standing for hours looking over the remains. She snuck a look at the clock. Nearly twelve hours had passed since Booth had picked her up this morning. Her stomach was reminding her that she had not nourished it since the coffee and doughnuts she and Booth had shared on the way to the crime scene.
"Com'on, Lazy Bones," she opened her eyes to find Booth towering over her with her jacket and purse draped over one arm, "Time to go get dinner."
She started to protest, then realized how futile that would be and accepted his hand to stand up. He helped her get her jacket on and handed her purse to her. She went to get the paperwork off of her desk that she would need to fill out, but Booth's hand stayed her.
"No, Bones," his tone was firm, "It'll be here when you come in tomorrow."
"Booth-"
"Bones we are not going to argue about this," he captured her arm and turned her away from the desk and toward the door, "We just worked a twelve-hour shift on an emotionally draining case. We still need to eat, so the paperwork can wait. Besides," he smiled, "The way you look it'd just sit in your bag all night anyway."
"You don't look much better, Booth," she pointed out weakly, but followed him out of the door.
Deciding on Chinese food, they took it back to her apartment to eat. They ate hungrily and in companionable silence. Now that she was out of the confines of the Jeffersonian, she found that the emotional strain of the day had begun to take its toll. She could see from the lines that crossed Booth's face that he was not faring much better. They finished their meal and cleared the table, barely two words spoken between them, and sat down at either ends of her couch.
"Rough day, huh?" he said finally, breaking the silence.
"Yes," she agreed, tucking her legs underneath of her.
"I'm glad we caught a break, though."
"As am I."
"You alright, over there, Bones?" he crossed the gap that separated them and gazed intently into her eyes.
She met them, "Honestly, Booth, I don't know."
He waited quietly for her to continue, his compassion and concern for her well-being evident in his eyes.
"I'm not like you, Booth," she went on, "I don't feel things intuitively. I recognized that on one hand death is a natural part of the life cycle, but on the other it seems like such an unnatural thing for a child to experience. Especially one so young," she looked into his eyes pleading for him to understand her position, "So it is not as if I am cold or unfeeling- though I can compartmentalize well in order to be clinical within the lab- I simply do not know how to properly convey the emotions that I feel. We face death every day, and so this is how I cope."
"I know, Bones," he acknowledged.
He opened his arms, inviting her into his embrace. Tired and weary she accepted and fell into him. His sturdy arms wrapped around her, stabilizing and comforting her at the same time. She breathed deeply, her body relaxing at the familiar scent his body emitted. Before she realized it, he had drawn her up onto his lap. She tensed at the close, almost intimate, contact, but calmed as his hands began easing all of the tension that had been building in her back and shoulders throughout the day. She was asleep within minutes.
Seeley Booth looked over his shoulder at the face of his sleeping partner. The sorrow he had read in her face was beginning to ease as she drifted further off to sleep, and he could feel her body molding itself to his own. He wondered if other people realized how deeply she felt about the cases they took on. He doubted it, and the knowledge made him sad yet touched at the same time. He was sad because she so rarely let anyone in to help ease the burdens that she carried; touched because he was among the few. It was times like these that made him wish he had never drawn the line between them. Times like these he wished he were in her life every night, to ease her cares and help her to sleep, to wake up beside her each morning and face the day together.
Gently, so as not to wake her, he eased one arm below her legs and one under her back and carried her into her room. He set her down on the bed as if her body were as fragile as her emotions, and smiled as her hair fell around her face framing it perfectly. As he eased the covers around her, he noticed how peaceful she looked in her sleep. If he was honest with himself he had to admit that she claimed a large portion of his heart; but that same love would not let him push her too far too fast. He valued her too much as a friend to lose her.
And so instead of fulfilling his own dreams and curling up beside her, he placed a gentle kiss on her brow and left, "I love you Bones," he whispered into the night, "Sweet dreams."
